


Seasons Turning

by Sholio



Category: White Collar
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-10
Updated: 2013-02-10
Packaged: 2017-11-28 19:31:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/678097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Another of my Fandom Stocking fics. Early season two, a few days after 2x01 - Peter has doubts about Neal's first weekend on his own. Basically this fic is a shameless excuse for angsty emotional h/c.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seasons Turning

Peter had always had a sixth sense where Neal was concerned. It wasn't infallible, but he'd learned to listen to that faint-but-intrusive little voice prodding him in Neal's direction. 

Right now it was prodding hard, but he wasn't sure what to do about it.

Neal had been out of prison for a little less than a week, following Kate's death and the reinstatement of their deal. So far things seemed to be going as well as could be expected. They'd closed a case, and flashbacks aside, Neal hadn't had a complete meltdown and he hadn't tried to run.

Peter kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

This would be Neal's first weekend on his own since Kate had died. Peter had missed most of Neal's grieving process -- he'd kept tabs on Neal in prison via sympathetic guards, but it wasn't the same as being there; however, his general impression had been that prison was probably the best thing that could have happened to Neal at that point in his life. (This wasn't an insight he ever planned to share with Neal, however.) All Neal's decisions had been taken out of his hands, along with just about everything that he could have used to harm himself, and he'd been able to simply go on autopilot -- which, according to Peter's sources, was basically what he'd done.

But now Neal was out, and after a week of near-normalcy at the White Collar offices, he'd be completely on his own for two days. Well, Mozzie would be with him, but Peter had severe doubts about Mozzie's reliability, even though his loyalty to Neal was unquestionable. Mozzie could lend a sympathetic shoulder -- probably a lot better than Peter himself, if he was going to be honest -- but what he couldn't (wouldn't) give Neal was structure, which in Peter's opinion was the main thing that had kept Neal from going off the rails for the last two months.

He toyed with options ranging from putting Neal on house arrest for the weekend, to going over to check up on him, but there was nothing he could come up with that didn't feel like a punishment, and likely to push Neal away right when he needed someone most. Peter still had his tentative deal with Mozzie, but their truce was paper-thin, and Peter had no confidence that Mozzie would go to "the Man" if anything happened. Heck, if Neal decided to cut the anklet and make a break for it, Mozzie would probably be driving the getaway car.

Around and around ...

On Friday afternoon, Peter had casually dropped some hints, and finally asked outright if Neal wanted to come over on Saturday afternoon. "I'll be watching the game, and El has a bunch of leftovers from her last catering event. Little canapes and things with fancy French names. Don't make me eat them all on my own."

Neal had half-smiled, with that distant, brittle look in his eyes again. "I'll think about it," he'd said.

Peter had looked at him, looked more closely, seen the fine lines of strain and exhaustion on his face. "I think El's making moussaka tonight, if you like Greek," he offered spontaneously. Leaving Neal alone had suddenly seemed like a bad idea.

"I have plans," Neal had said. Plans, Peter thought, which probably involved drinking with Mozzie, or maybe just drinking alone, but what was he going to do, drag Neal off by the ear? Neal was an adult, and entitled to grieve in his own time and his own way.

But it still bothered Peter, the idea of Neal who-knows-where, doing who-knows-what. He told himself it was just that for the last two months, he'd known exactly where Neal was at all times. He'd known that if anything happened he needed to know about, he'd get a phone call. Now ... now Neal was on his own, if still tenuously tethered by the anklet. Peter was simply going to have to adjust to having a looser leash on him.

It wasn't just that, though, and he knew it. This was a precarious time in Neal's life, and if anything was going to happen, this weekend was the most likely time, with Neal out of prison, out of sight, and facing a life without Kate. Peter wasn't sure if he was more worried that Neal would hurt himself or someone else; he knew full well that Neal hadn't given up on finding Kate's killer, any more than Neal had given up on finding Kate when Peter had gotten him out of prison in the first place.

And the biggest clue to Kate's murder was sitting in Diana's wall safe. Peter didn't like that, but he liked the idea even less of Neal haring out into the world with the music box in hand, chasing people who had proven they'd resort to murder to protect themselves.

So Peter ate dinner with his wife and went out to his usual Friday night poker game, hunching his shoulders against a bitterly cold, early-spring rain. He begged off early, though; his mind wasn't on the game. Instead he vegged in front of the TV and listened to the rain pattering outside the window, while El went over her monthly business accounts in the kitchen. Every so often, Peter got up and checked Neal's whereabouts on his laptop. At June's; at June's; still at June's.

And then, after an unusually long lapse during which Peter got engrossed in the ending of the mystery show he was watching, Neal's dot moved. It wasn't at June's anymore. It was outside the Burkes' house.

Peter stared at that for a while. The dot didn't move. If Neal was outside in the rain, he must be sopping wet and freezing.

_If he wants to come in, he'll knock._

But he didn't knock, and the dot didn't move, and finally Peter couldn't take it anymore. He opened the door and looked out.

Neal was sitting hunched on the top step, hands in his lap, looking out at the rain-washed street. He wasn't even wearing so much as a light coat, and his suit (vintage, expensive) was plastered to his body with rainwater, his hair flattened into a rough approximation of a bowl cut.

"What are you _doing_?" Peter asked, disbelief and worry making him snappier than he meant to be.

Neal looked up at him, but slowly, barely tracking. Drops of water glittered on his eyelashes. Peter decided that questions could wait; the important thing was getting Neal inside and warm, and seriously, _what had he been thinking?_

"C'mon," Peter said, hooking a gentle hand under Neal's elbow. Neal came, tractable and unresisting. In the Burkes' living room, he stopped just inside the door and stood blinking, as if he couldn't understand how he came to be here.

El appeared, took in the situation at a glance and trotted upstairs, returning in an instant with an armload of towels, fresh and warm from the dryer. "Can you get some of my clothes -- sweats, loose stuff?" Peter asked her, and she gave Neal's wet arm a supportive squeeze and then vanished again. Peter steered Neal to the couch, spread a towel and started rubbing him dry.

El dropped off the dry clothes and retreated to give them privacy. Peter stripped Neal's wet clothing off him and got him dressed in a pair of Peter's sweatpants and a loose shirt. Neal put up no resistance and said nothing, letting Peter dress him like a doll.

Although Neal was shivering, Peter could tell it was a lot more than just the cold. Working the White Collar unit, he didn't see as many traumatized people as if he were in, say, Violent Crimes, but he still recognized the signs. The idea of calling emergency services crossed his mind, but what could they do? Neal didn't seem to be in any physical danger. He probably ought to be getting a heap of therapy, but he'd refused every time it was offered. Maybe Peter should have made him; he'd been opting for a hands-off approach, but now he castigated himself in hindsight -- Neal wasn't thinking clearly, and maybe Peter should have made more of his decisions for him, maybe he should have pressed for things that Neal wasn't capable of realizing that he needed ...

Woulda, coulda, shoulda. Leaving Neal on the couch, Peter went into the kitchen and found El arranging cookies on a plate. Beside it stood three cups of hot cocoa, the real stuff, made with milk and chocolate and cinnamon and, from the smell of things, a not inconsiderable amount of rum.

"How is he?" El asked quietly.

"I don't know," Peter admitted. "And I don't know why he came _here,_ " he added in a rush of desperation. "I'm not his best friend, El; I'm basically his parole officer."

"He trusts you," El murmured, squeezing his hand, and under her words he thought he heard the echo of Neal at the Howser Clinic: _You're the only person I trust ..._

Neal looked up at them when they came back with the cocoa and cookies. "I didn't mean ..." he began, and trailed off. He looked helpless and lost. "I don't know why --" he started again, then shook his head. "I should go."

Peter sat down beside him and put a cup of cocoa into his hands, wrapping Neal's fingers around it. "First, you have to try this. El makes the world's best hot cocoa."

"I don't think I'd go _that_ far," El said, sitting on his other side. Neal gave her a wary glance, his body language reading trapped and nervous, and she backed off, sliding down towards the end of the couch with a small, apologetic smile. "But you shouldn't go until you've at least had a few cookies, and maybe watched a movie with us."

"With the two of you outvoting me, I'm guessing that I'm in for a long night of 1940s musicals," Peter said, feigning disappointment.

Neal looked genuinely baffled by the interplay, which meant he still wasn't tracking as well as Peter would like, but at least he showed a little interest when El pulled out a stack of DVDs.

Peter immediately realized -- and he could see El did too -- that certain kinds of films were going to be off-limits at the moment: romantic comedies with dark-haired love interests, for example. Anything with explosions. Anything that dealt too heavily with a character who had lost a loved one ...

There went 90% of his and El's collective DVD library.

El ended up putting in a DVD of _Mythbusters_ , which wasn't her usual fare, but was at least guaranteed not to contain anything that would shatter Neal's presently fragile state of mind. Peter got up to fetch a couple of afghans from the hall closet (Mrs. Mitchell originals), one of which he dropped on Neal's lap; he nested with El underneath the other.

They started watching the DVD in silence, but soon El was giggling at the antics of the hosts, and Peter was caught guessing as to whether the myths being tested would actually work or not. Neal watched quietly, but every once in a while he smiled a bit, more at the banter next to him than on the screen.

Somewhere in the middle of the DVD, El fell asleep on Peter's chest. He looked over to see if Neal had noticed -- and realized that Neal was crying, in total silence. Neal's face was still, his eyes fixed on the TV, but tear-tracks glistened in the light from the screen, trailing from his open eyes to the corners of his mouth.

And Peter's heart cracked right in half. There was something about Neal's silent grief -- trying so hard to be quiet, to keep it to himself even when he was sitting an arm's length away -- that undid Peter completely. He'd never been that fond of Kate -- _though maybe I could have been,_ he thought, if he'd had a chance to know her. Mostly he had thought she was dragging a nice kid's heart through the mud, and had resented her for it. But she had been Neal's love. She had been his everything.

 _She was his Elizabeth,_ Peter thought, looking down at the top of El's dark head, and he tried to imagine the mental place he'd be in, two months after Elizabeth's death.

He couldn't even think it. And there was Neal, on the other end of the couch and a million miles away, locked in a prison whose bars were made of grief.

Peter carefully eased himself out from under his sweet burden, sliding El's head down to rest on a couch pillow that he deftly slipped beneath the spill of dark hair; he'd had plenty of practice at doing it without waking her. This brought him within reach of Neal, and without looking at him, Peter wrapped an arm around him, pulled him in and held Neal against his shoulder. He didn't even have to think about it; he reacted as he would if it was anyone he loved in distress: El, maybe, or one of his younger cousins.

Neal resisted for a moment, and then something in him crumbled, and he melted into Peter's grasp. Peter had the momentary fantasy that his arm was the only thing holding Neal together, keeping him from shattering into a thousand pieces. He could feel Neal shaking with stifled, quiet sobs. 

Peter rested his cheek on top of Neal's hair, which had dried into a fluff of unruly curls. He'd stopped paying attention to the DVD, but they both went on pretending to watch it until Neal made a small snuffling sound and pushed away. He wiped his face with the backs of his hands. Peter wordlessly retrieved a box of Kleenex from the end table, put it on the couch, and then took their cocoa cups into the kitchen.

When he came back with a glass of wine and a beer, El (though still asleep) had rearranged herself so that now she was reclining on Neal, who was sitting stiffly with a wad of Kleenex in one hand. "She just ... did this," he said very quietly, as Peter studied the new configuration of the couch's inhabitants, which left no room for him. "I think she thinks I'm you."

 _I think she knows perfectly well who you are,_ Peter thought, but all he said was, "Well, move over, then." Neal, after a hesitation, carefully shuffled over, trying not to disturb El. Peter settled in beside him and handed him the glass of wine. 

Up close, Neal looked very un-Neal-like, with his face blotchy and his eyes swollen. But he also seemed a little less brittle, a little less apt to fly apart if someone around him made a sudden move. Peter deliberately focused his attention back on the TV, and after a while he felt Neal starting to lean on him. A little later, he removed the wine glass from Neal's relaxing fingers, and looked down at the drowsing tangle of El and Neal, tipped like dominos into each other and him.

He knew better than to believe they'd fixed anything tonight. Neal was going to have to dig his way out of this pit on his own; the most Peter could do was lend an assistive hand now and then.

But sometimes a helping hand and a moment of stillness were what mattered.

Neal slept on Peter's shoulder; El slept with her head resting on Neal's thigh. Peter settled more comfortably into the depths of the couch. He wasn't really sleepy yet, and while they rested, he went on watching TV -- and keeping watch over them both, into the night.


End file.
